"I've danced to Shakira in 4 countries"

No seriously.....It's true. 

I haven't updated my blog in a while, because my last blog post recounted the most incredible week of my life (read below). I had no idea how to begin writing about other experiences while that week was still resonating within me.  It made me feel like anything I did, or any words that I typed on this google-funded-blocked-in-China-blog would all be inferior. 

As I wrap up and reflect on my semester in China, I realize how many changes I have experienced in the past few months.  There are some more obvious ones: when I open my internet, the homepage is Chinese to English translation, I listen to Tibetan music non stop, and I have an impressive sandal tan.  You might not even recognize me when I return! Just kidding. As you can expect, the larger changes I see in myself stem from the  "internal revolution" I feel that I have experienced here.  I was always the girl who was too scared to go to sleep over summer camps, and here I am closing my 4 months abroad. 

Someone told me before I left "You're going to CHINA; how can you not change?"- and that SCARED me. I love my life at home. I love playing volleyball, I love living with my friends, and I love the comfortable life I live in the US.  That's what made it so hard to leave. Until I realized, where is the fun in comfort? This whole semester has been about me growing up. Spontaneity, risk taking, and learning about myself have been the major themes of my semester.  Through these guidelines, I feel that I've discovered so much about myself. Yeah, yeah Christina sure you have. I don't want to say that I've "found myself" while I've been in China- because Christina Nicholls is not a cliché. I have, however, learned incredible amounts about myself, way I look at things, what I like, what I can handle, what the future might entail for me, and even a small bit of the world outside of good old Austin, Texas. 

I cannot believe that I have been in China for so long!  It's weird when I realize the things that freaked me out upon my arrival barely phase me now, and that I am actually comfortable living on the other side of the world from home.  It's also bizarre to think back to my departure from the Austin airport, teary eyed and full of fear.  After this, I feel like I can do almost anything. I can be stranded in the mountains on the border of Tibet, I can travel though China with no fear, I can live in a rural village, I can eat dumplings till I pass out, I can befriend Tibetan nomads, and I can cross the street without getting run over (most of the time).

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a very goal oriented person.  I like lists, and crossing things off my lists.  I still have a goal sheet my volleyball coach made me create my freshman year of high school (if you wanted to know I only have one goal left to cross off- and one year to accomplish it).  I have a "bucket list", which is a list of things to do before I die, and it continues to grow longer and longer.  I made a goal to study abroad about 5 or 6 years ago, and as hard as it was to leave, this is the most fulfilling goal that I've been able to check off my long long list. 

As stellar as this experience has been, I AM ready to go home. I'm ready to walk into a store where I can understand everything, I'm ready to not stress over the water sanitation, I'm ready to eat cheese and raw vegetables, and I'm ready to walk down the street and not have people stare at me, take pictures of me, or shove a video camera in my face.  I'm also ready for my mom to come! It's been months since I've seen my parents, probably most of you have seen them more recently than I have (no really), and I miss my mom and dad terribly. I can't wait to show my mom where I've been living, introduce her to my host family, as well as travel to the part of China where our family is from. 

For those of you who read my blog, thank you. I realize that my posts were sporadic and rather long, with plenty of scattered thoughts (pretty standard Christina).  My program ends in a week, my mother and I will be traveling for 2 weeks, then it's back to the Western side of the world. Consequently, this is my final blog post of my unreal China semester.  I am fairly confident that I will return to China, hopefully sooner rather than later. Who knows, maybe I'll be back in a year after I graduate from college? 

If I told you I loved everything about China, I would be lying. If anyone ever tells you that, I'm willing to bet a whole lot of money that either they're not being honest, or they didn't spend enough time here. I did, however, love every experience I was fortunate enough to encounter.  I've begun to change the way I think about things, and many of my priorities have shifted. I've traveled to the other side of the world, and now things are starting to look different. 

See you in a few weeks! 

The Life Changer

I am having trouble even beginning this blog post, because I know that the things that I have experienced and learned in the past week are more than my words can ever describe. 

Our field trip ended, with a few days in Shangri-la.  I'm basically in Tibet. Shangrli-la's population is almost all Tibetan, and if I didn't already love the Tibetan people and culture enough, this week has made me fall for them even harder.  The city is beautiful, with people walking around in their traditional Tibetan clothes, and the snowy mountains in the distance.  Tibetans love to sing and dance.  Everywhere you go, Tibetan music is playing, people are dancing, and often times prayer flags out number people. 

I had already been here for about a day, just passing through, during my spring break mountain trip.  During our class time here, we went to an orphanage, to the largest monastery in Yunnan, and visited a non profit school for rural Tibetans. After the close of the field trip, I planned to take a few day backpacking hike with a few of my friends.  However, after seeing the school and the orphanage, I had a really strong gut feeling that I should stay here. It was a feeling that I couldn't ignore.  So with the spontaneous air that I've adopted as the theme of my China trip, I changed all my plans. I bailed on my friends, and inquired about volunteer opportunities at the school and orphanage we visited.  

Before I begin describing my outstanding, life changing week, I'll talk a little bit about the things I did with my class. 

I sow lotsssss of YAK again. I danced around the presents they left, and got as close as I could. Okay I probably could have gotten closer but I was kind of scared haha. 

 On the side of a mountain there is some Tibetan writing, I'm not sure what it means... but it reminded me of the Hollywood sign. But in Tibet....haha 

The monastery was cool, there were lots of monks (duh Christina), and really beautiful architecture and art. 

 This painting represents life, and how everything is codependent. I see it all over this city

Okay now to the good stuff.  Something that I've considered doing as a future profession, is working with international adoption.  When we got to the orphanage, the kids danced and sang for us! Afterwards, we taught them duck duck goose (attempting to translate it directly as YA, YA, E- pronounced uhhh).

These children are actually not up for adoption, they just live in this home together.  The director described it as a big family, where they are raised not only by the people who work there, but each other, as a big family.  She herself was a Tibetan orphan, who lived in foster families, and much preferred this atmosphere for the children. It was an interesting concept, but they seemed so happy, so how do you question that? 

Okay, now to the school.  The school is called ETTI (Eastern Tibet Training Institute), and it's not a normal school. It was created for rural Tibetans with few opportunities, looking to make the move from their rural lifestyle to an urban one, with more jobs and different opportunities.  It teaches them English, formal Chinese, simple computer skills like setting up an email, basic accounting, and many other skills to help them make their transition to urban life.  All their tuition and room and board are paid for, and at the end of the term, they have a two week internship to help them start their careers. 

Most of the students are about my age, and they all come from poor rural families. Almost all of them are nomads. NOMADS. As in they don't have a permanent home, they most depending on the season, making a living off herding their animals.  One boy told me his family had 160 yak, and 400 sheep! Stop and imagine this for a second.  They leave their families, countless animals, and everything they're familiar with in their rural home, to go to school.  They are probably going to be the first ones in their family with a job in a city.  Many of them think Shangri-la is a big city, because to them, it is. Compared to the rest of China, it's a one horse town. 

I grew very close to these students.  They were absolutely incredible. Every day working at the school with them, I was in awe and inspired by their dedication to education and dedication to changing their life.  To put their view of life in perspective, one day in class while working on forming sentences about going places by bus train etc., one of the students made the sentence "to take a yak to America". HA! He didn't realize A) how far the US is from China (with a small body of water in between) and B) that no one really rides yak outside of rural life. It was SO charming, and made me love him even more. 

I played frisbee with them one day during their free time! It was very funny, they were uhhh not very good at it. Frisbee is definitely an American game, we called it feipan (flying plate). 

On Saturday morning, I went with them to a Temple outside of the city.  We took this tiny bus, and the whole way they sang Tibetan songs.  That's something I love about this culture, how seriously they take their music.  Music and dancing are central to the Tibetan lifestyle.  The temple had more prayer flags than I've ever seen! I couldn't walk straight, I had to continually duck around and walk through the flags. It was really cool.

Saturday afternoon, I went back to the orphanage.  This time I brought them a big bin of candy, and we went to the river nearby and sat in the grass while they ate the candy.  They weren't very talkative, so most of our conversation consisted of me blabbering in Chinese while they inhaled the sweets I brought.  It was so much fun spending time with them, and I hope that my short visit showed them that they are really loved. 

ETTI's English classes were split up into two parts, one part followed their book, and the other part was focused on speaking.  This week in the speaking class, they were talking about their dream job and goals.  Some of them dreamed of being English tour guides, some dreamed of going to college, and others dreamed of singing Tibetan songs on the grassland of their homeland.  When you think about it, we're actually not that different. We all have dreams.  One of my dreams now is to return to this area, and some of their dreams are to go to the US. 

Saying goodbye to the students at ETTI was really difficult for me.  I grew unimaginably close to them over the course of less than a week.  I think despite our severely different backgrounds, we were are similar points in our life, and actually had a lot in common.  This allowed us to actually form relationships.  Each of us had goals for our future, some likely, and some unlikely.  We were both struggling to learn a new language, where we helped each other.  All of us were also away from home, and the things we are familiar and comfortable with.  They've been away from home at ETTI for about 2 months, I've been in China for 2 and a half months. We were all a little homesick, but also realized the positive things we were doing for our future and ourselves. 

 Even if they didn't learn that much, I did. 

One of the girls told me she believes it was through "yuanfen" that we were brought together.  Yuanfen can be translated as two people being destined to meet, or fate. This is is the best feeling a town/city/village has given me during my time in China.  I can't deny the feeling that teaching and forming relationships with these outstanding students gives me. This is the first place in China that I could see myself living as a post college option. I fully intend on returning to this place. I can't imagine not returning, and I will NEVER forget the things I learned or the people I met during this past week.

I realize this blog post is a little less humorous than the past few, but I can't help but to speak passionately about my experience. It was THAT incredible.  It has helped me realize the things I really care about, as well as maybe narrow a little bit of what I want to do with the rest of my life. If you want to read or learn more about the two organizations I was involved with during my life changing week, this is the website to the school www.etti.org.cn and the website to the orphanage is www.tendol-gyalzur-tibet.ch

Even though I had these life changing experiences, and feel like I've conquered the world, as well as many of my fears in China. I'm still the same awkward, overdramatic, spaz Christina...

www.etti.org.cn

www.tendol-gyalzur-tibet.ch

TIC- This. Is. China.

Confirmation: I am a bona-fide city girl.

 TIC is a phrase we stole from a movie where the main character says TIA- This is Africa. So with our own clever and creative spin, we've constructed TIC.  This phrase cannot be just thrown around.  It is accompanied by a situation where you think "WOW I'm in China!", or when something really weird or crazy happens. 

This is a TIC moment. I was sitting on top of a mud wall after walking to a nearby village.  And suddenly I thought "WOAH. I'm in rural China"

I am currently on a field trip with my class throughout the rural areas of Yunnan.  People who have never seen me outside a city context (which is probably every single one of you) wouldn't even recognize me right now! I'm living with a rural family in the village of Sideng in the Shaxi valley. Yesterday-I farmed, the other night-I slept at a Buddhist monastery, and the night before that-on a Daoist mountain!

The day we spent on the Daoist mountain was probably my favorite day so far during my time in China.  Nothing spectacular happened, but it was just one of those days where everything is just right.  We had a lecture given by a nun, I hiked around the holy mountain for hours, and i played glow in the dark frisbee! It felt like summer camp. 

This is the monastery we stayed at 

The monastery was perched on a beautiful mountain, full of... MONKEYS. 

They were cute, most of the time...but they were pretty aggressive when it came to food. And smart! This monkey unwrapped the candy before eating it. 


There was one time where a monkey spotted me with a handful of peanuts, ran up to me, and tried to get the peanuts out of my hand. This resulted in it grabbing my shorts and tugging them downward.  

No one else was even touched by a monkey! I'm the only one who got assaulted! My contact was involuntary, but of course a monkey would almost pull MY pants down in front of a bunch of Buddhist monks... if he had been successful I would probably have been banned from China for public indecency along with a few curses from the Buddhist mountain. 

Before leaving the monastery I hiked to the top of the mountain in the morning to watch the sunrise! It was the first time I have ever just sat and watched the sun rise, it was incredible. This has got to be one of my favorite pictures of my whole life.  

From the mountain, we hiked about an hour down to the Sideng village valley. Sideng is really cool-everyone knows everyone! And most people are related. Anyone you walk by automatically smiles and greets you. I love this village. 

This valley is GORGEOUS. This picture looks enhanced, but it's not. This is what I am surrounded by every day!

My host family here is great! I have two meimei (little sisters). They are SO CUTE! I adore them, and it's funny to see them interact.  

This is outside my home in Sideng village 

This is my upscale 4star bedroom

This is our bathroom (not-actually-a-bathroom-just-a-wood-building-with-a-hole-in-the-ground). This serves all 10 people in the house. Yeah that's right, 10 people. No bathroom hogging here. You have to walk through the chicken coop to get to the "bathroom", and I usually have to fight off chickens to have the place to myself. No really. I have to battle them for privacy. 

This is the kitchen and dining room. We eat our meals on the benches on the left. In this photo my Waipo (grandmother) is making dinner full of mystery meat.  Eating here makes me want to be vegetarian again.  During my homestay I am continually eating unidentified meat.  Back in the states, I pick off any part of the meat with visible fat; however, I don't want to be rude to my family, so I just grin and eat what they serve. Usually to counteract anything gross I shovel absurd amounts of rice in my mouth to chase the scary meat I'm eating. 

We also have little pigs! However there is no mother. Every time I see them I can't help but wonder if their mom was the mystery meat from the night before...

Here is our garden in the center of the house. The layout of houses here are all identical, with a courtyard in the middle of every house and rooms branching off. 

This is the unidentified protein I had for dinner last night...Although it could be worse. My friend had congealed blood for dinner one night! Yeah, that's right. Blooood (for youtube watchers that was intended to be read in the voice of the little boy in the famous video)

The other day, I farmed. I'm not exactly cut out for the farming lifestyle.  I needed about a 10 foot radius with the hoe in my hands, otherwise it turned into a weapon. 

The only person I can really communicate with is my sister, she is 23 and the mother of my meimei. I really like her, but as I talk to her, I realize how completely different our lives are.  We have nothing in common. She is a 23 year old mother with minimal education, who has barely left her village. She lives in the house where generations of her family have all grown up. She dreams of making the unlikely move to a bigger city with her daughter . I am an American college student with nothing tying me down, who lives a frivolous life in comparison to hers.  She stitches and takes care of her daughter, I play volleyball and hang out with my friends.  There are no links between the two of us.  And yet, I feel oddly close to her.  I really love spending time with her and her daughter, even though it's a struggle to speak to her.  I really will miss her when I leave this village. 

This is the most challenging, but also most rewarding thing that I have ever done.  This is sooo not me, I am DEFINITELY a city girl, but I can handle it this.  I'm proving to myself throughout this semester that I can do almost anything.  Sometimes I feel like I'm having an out of body experience.  This has been surreal, and life changing. I'm unable to pinpoint exactly how I've changed, but I can feel it.  Sometimes I just stop and think to myself "Oh. My. Gosh. I'm in China"- a classic TIC moment. 

"We're the three best friends that anyone could have.."

"and we'll never ever ever leave each other!"

.......even if we wanted to.

So, you know that quote: "Do one thing every day that scares you"- I think that during my spring break trip to the mountains, I made up for every day in my last 20 1/2 years of existence that I have not obeyed that phrase.  

Despite that inspirational introduction, this is not a self improvement blog post.  Just about my CRAZY trip to the Chinese Meili Snow Mountain, where i saw snow for the first time, hung out with some yak, and went without a shower for a week.  Preface: this is pretty long. But there are LOTS of pictures! 

I love Tibet.  I've dreamed of going to Tibet.  Unfortunately, during the month of March, Tibet is closed to foreigners.  So, we had to settle for going  as close to Tibet as possible-to the Meili Snow Mountain that is half in Tibet, half in China. I was beyond thrilled to finally immerse myself in the culture that I had fallen in love with through my studies in Central Texas.  Our 6 day backpacking trip actually turned into a 10 day adventure with a 5 day stop in a less than thrilling town, with some pretty extreme highs and very drastic lows.  

Saturday March 19th:
Kiersten, Stephanie and I arrived in SHANGRI-LA. Not the mythical destination, but a Tibetan city in China. We went to some Stupas, a Buddhist Temple, and a huuuuge prayer wheel. Tibetan prayer flags were everywhere!

Oh and this is me running Tibetan Bay Watch style after posing next to some Yak just walking down the road



Tibetan Buddhism says that if you turn this wheel 3 times, its equivalent to 37.2 billion prayers! The way my trip went- I obviously needed more than 37.2 billion prayers....

This picture is not, in fact, me in my signature teal jacket. Its a local Tibetan woman in her traditional clothing spinning the prayer wheel!

Sunday March 20th:
We departed for some of "Heaven's Villages".  Villages around the Meili Snow Mountain are called Heaven's Villages because the clouds linger making it look like the villages are in the sky. This bus ride was 80 miles and it took us 11 hours. The road was ROUGH. I'm being generous when I say it was about 5% paved. It was a one way road, along the CLIFFS of the mountains. We had to get out of the bus a few times because it wasn't safe enough for the passengers. If China says its not safe, its REALLY not safe. 

During our splendid 11 hour ride we also got caught in a blizzard. This is one of the times we had to deboard the bus, because we came head to head with another truck. There were literally inches between our bus and the truck. Half of me thought the bus was going to not make it across and tumble down the mountain.

Monday March 21st:
We woke up in the mountain town of FeiLai Si (fay-lie-suh) to a winter wonderland! It looked like Christmas!  From FeiLai Si, we made our way to MingYong. Another very small village in the valley of the mountain that is home to the MingYong Glacier- the lowest altitude glacier in China. On our way down there, we passed a Y in the road. The left went to MingYong. The right? TIBET!

We were only a few dozen kilometers away from the border. It was so exiting to physically be soooo close- we considered bribing our driver to smuggle us into Tibet. Just kidding... kind of. 

We hiked to the foot of the glacier and it was absolutely the coolest natural thing that I have ever seen. The pictures of the glacier are not that great because the white snow and ice blended in with the sky and clouds

Because we are traveling during the off season for tourists, the village of Mingyong was a Ghost Town. We were the only foreigners, and only saw one person on our whole hike, who was a local Tibetan woman who showed us a short cut. But we saw plenty of Yak and horses roaming the streets.

Tuesday March 22nd:
On Tuesday morning, we went on another more intense hike to get closer to the glacier. About an hour into the hike, we ran into a small problem.  Well a rather large one. A yak. A wild one. One of our professors gave us 4 words of advice for this situation: "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE". We did exactly that. Sprinted down the mountain!

Except for this part, cause I'm right on the edge. I won't lie I thought I might fall down the side of the mountain during this one.






Tuesday afternoon we arrived back in Deqin to buy our bus tickets to return to Shangri-La. This is where we heard for the first time of many: we were snowed in.  The mountain pass was too snowy and dangerous to let us out of the city. 

Wednesday March 23:
7:30 AM we arrived at the bus station to receive the bad news again that it snowed overnight and the mountain roads were still way too dangerous.  The only other way out of the town was through Tibet.

We went to a Tibetan Buddhist store where all three of us purchased Tibetan Prayer Flags! I bought SO many. Partially cause I love them, and partially because a small bit of me thought that maybe there was some kind of Tibetan prayer to make snow melt faster.

Oh and I also found a little piece of GOLD in Rural China

Thursday March 24:

 7:30 AM we arrived at the bus station to once again receive the news that we wouldn't be leaving Deqin that day.  On the scale of worst cities to be stuck in, Deqin is definitely near the top.  It is a 1 1/2 road town.  The one road is probably about the length of a football field, maybe a little bigger. Besides the surrounding mountain scenery that we COULDN'T see because of the bad weather, i think its safe to say its a rather unattractive town.

To put this in perspective, we got excited when we were able to eat food that expired in December 2010. Literally. We would call out dates to each other trying to find the least expired items, getting excited and cheering when they were as close as last December and January.  One good thing happened on this great day of Thursday March 24th- a shower! The first shower for all three of us in 6 days. The only one during our whole trip. Solid. 

As I stated in earlier blog posts, buildings in China don't have insulation or heat. The only
source of heat is the heated blanket that comes with every room. Problem: Mountain villages=unreliable electricity. Every single night we went to bed and woke up in the morning seeing our breath in front of us. Our heated blankets were our life support during our extended mountain stay.  Upside: Chinese only drink hot water, so my boiling hot water would turn ice cold over night. Downside: cold toes, and any clothes that got wet from snow or sweat, had absolutely no chance of ever drying.

I feel like even if I had on as many layers as this baby, I STILL would have been cold. 

Friday March 25:

7:30 AM. No bus.  We were supposed to be back in Kunming for class at 2:30 this day, but since we obviously didn't make it, our professor asked us to skype (video chat) into the class discussion.  Easier said than done.  There were plenty of places with internet; however foreigners are not allowed to use them.  One time we walked into an internet cafe, with probably about 20 ancient computers. He took one look at us and said all of his computers were broken. Really?! Really.....he could have just said no. It was obviously a lie because he was ON a computer. 

At this point. We desperately wanted to go home, not just to Kunming, but back to America. Our high spirits about being immersed in the Tibetan culture slowly declined, as the temperature stayed low, and the homesickness and chocolate intake levels spiked.  We contemplated exit strategies through Tibet, as we began to ration our money, run out of clean clothes, and dream of worlds with heaters and food that had not passed the expiration date. 

Saturday March 26th:
7:30 AM. No bus. We weren't the only ones stranded. Lots of locals were trying to get out of town as well as hundreds (literally, we counted) of trucks lining the road waiting to leave.

In this picture you can see a fraction of the trucks waiting to leave. If you look closely you can see orange cones set up to block the road from anyone trying to get out. If you were able to bribe the police to let you out, they made you sign a waver that they weren't responsible for your life. No thank you.

Sunday March 27th:
7:30 AM. VICTORY! We got tickets on the first bus out of town! After we bought our bus tickets, we were so happy we walked back to our hostel singing. 

I thought 11 hours on the bus ride in was bad? Psh that was nothing. This return trip took a mere... NINETEEN hours. 80 miles in 19 hours. There was one time were we were sitting in the same place for 5 1/2 hours. That 5 1/2 hour break was not all bad, I made my first snowman!

The roads were horrible, as expected. There was snow everywhere, and it was a one way road, with hundreds and hundreds of trucks and busses trying to make the drive on the first day open. This resulted in countless standoffs and forced problem solving when busses and trucks came head to head on the snowy one way road along the mountain roads. After riding on this bus, nothing on a bus in China will ever surprise me again. People transported chickens on our bus. CHICKENS. Clucking next to our seats.

Monday March 28th:
11:30 PM finally we returned to campus with class the next morning and no homework done. Apparently this is the first time in the 17 years of the program that anything like this has happened to students.  At least we made history?

Next to the snowbank on the side of the road. Almost as tall as me!

Although my tailbone might be bruised from going airborne on the unpaved mountain roads, I took only 1 shower the whole 10 days, I was perpetually cold, and I had the most severe homesickness that I have experienced in China- I am so grateful for the experience. It was something I've never done, and I honestly think I learned more about myself during those 10 days in rural China, than I have during this semester so far.  I really surprised myself, and did some brave things that I would have never expected City Christina to do. It is something I'm going to remember forever: the time I was stranded in a mountain town in rural China.